Living In The Shadow
by Padfoot-Ranger
Summary: PG13 just in case. This story is about what would happen if in the final battle, Voldermort wins instead of Harry. Main character is my own, but certain H.P characters will come up, but I'm not saying who. Anyway, please r/r...first chapter is a little


DISCLAIMER: I own Marianna, so far that's it.  Everything else is J.K Rowlings. (there'll be more stuff later that are mine though k? *wink*)

AUTHOR'S NOTE:  well this is a little short but it was an idea that hit me and I just had to write it down.  This is kind of just the background but…  Anyway if you read it please review, its only me second fic and I only started my first yesterday!  NE help would be great! Thx!

Living In The Shadow

Chapter One 

Nothing But A Myth

            The streets were cold, bare and unforgiving.  Most would say they always had been, but now, they were worse.  Of course there weren't many places that offered refuge from living on the street.  At least none that could offer you any more protection.  Nowhere was safe now.  No one was safe now.  The only hope one had at surviving was lying low, not being noticed.  Come to think of it, the streets were probably the safest place to be then.  No body noticed the people on the streets.  No body noticed a small, shivering child wrapped up in a torn sheet in the middle of a dark alley.  Yes the streets were definitely safer, and definitely harsher.

            Marianna had lived on the streets her whole life.  She was born in the street.  In the gutter.  She would always be in the gutter.  That was her place now and forever, and she learned to accept that.  It wasn't until her mother died, in the very alleyway that Marianna now sat, that she accepted her destiny.  She had always dreamt of one day leaving this place; of journeying off to somewhere where she could make something out of herself, someplace full of adventure and fun, not the terror and heartache she was used to.  That place had been Hogwarts.  If she could have only made it to the doors of Hogwarts, she could have escaped her destiny.  But that dream was now gone.  Hogwarts was nothing but a mist, a vague memory of what once was.  Just like the rest of the wizarding world.  It all happened the same night her mother died; the war.  Marianna knew it had started, not by words, but by the sky.  The dark clouds hung low, casting strange shadows on the ground.  It wasn't fog, it was more of a cocoon; trapping everyone within, making sure no one could escape.  The air itself was thick and muggy, making it hard to breathe.  And the sky…the sky had never looked so unforgiving.  It wasn't black like the night sky should have been.  It was red.  Blood red.  The only stars that shown were dim, and in the shape of the dark mark.  That's how it was on the night the war began, and that's how it was tonight, like every other night.  The sky was a scary thing; just as scary as the world itself was when you lived in the shadow of Voldermort.

            The war had only lasted three days.  Three days and then all hope was lost.  Harry Potter, the boy who was going to save them all, failed.  He hadn't succeeded in killing Voldermort; Voldermort had succeeded in killing him.  Marianna remembered that night like it was yesterday; everyone remembered that night.  In the days before, the wind had been loud, full of noises of the war.  Screams, cries, spells, all could be heard in the wind.  But suddenly the wind had grown quiet.  Nothing was heard but the intake of breath as everyone waited, hoping it had ended.  It did end, just not in the way they had hoped.  The quiet was suddenly torn as harsh, evil laughter rang through the streets.  One voice could be heard above all others laughing out of victory; the voice of the dark lord.

            It didn't take long for Voldermort and his death eaters to overcome Dumbledore's forces after the death of Harry Potter.  Many died, so many.  Others fled, only to be found and killed later.  Voldermort had succeeded.  

            In the months that followed, any one who was not a pureblood was hunted down.  The streets were littered with bodies of half-bloods and muggleborns.  When Voldermort couldn't find any more non-pure-bloods to kill, he turned on any one who did not support his ideas.  If the dark mark wasn't engraved in your forearm, you were considered a rebel, and executed.  

            Soon the killings slowed.  There weren't enough rebels left in the wizarding world to ever stand against Voldermort.  So instead he focused on "establishing his empire" as the death eaters called it.  New laws were put in force and a new ministry was founded.  The ministry of purity, or M.P.  Everyone who wasn't a death eater feared the M.P.  Feared it almost as much as they feared Voldermort himself. 

 The M.P had outlawed everything that made a wizard a wizard.  If you were not a death eater, you couldn't own a wand, you couldn't use magic, you couldn't even be considered a real witch or wizard.  Jobs were only given to death eaters, everyone else had to suffer.  Members of the new ministry would patrol the cities, searching for any "threats".  Every so often they would find one.  Usually it was a weak old man who could barely see, let alone fight off the M.P.  Three or four M.P personnel, which later became known as broomsticks, would surround the "threat", and torture him until he was on the brink of death.  Then they would beat him and hang him from a light post to let him bleed to death.  No body saw how any of those that were killed in this manner could have possibly posed a threat, but no body dared speak out against the dark lord or the M.P.  

            Rarely, very rarely, the broomsticks would stumble upon an old member of the Order of the Phoenix.  When this happened, they put on a weeks worth of so-called entertainment at the expense of the poor bloke.  Beatings, torture, they were just the beginning.  The things they did to people who belonged to the order were unimaginable; horrible.  The broomsticks said they had to pay for what they did in the past.  And they paid, they definitely paid.  

            People were told not to ever mention the Order or Harry Potter, that to do so was to defy the dark lord and was punishable by death.  Everything was punishable by death.  So the Order and Potter slowly seamed to disappear.  Soon they were nothing but a myth, a bedtime story that wizards told their children, that hopeful wizards told their children.

            Now, nothing of the old wizarding world remained.  Nothing was the same.  And it never would be.

            Marianna had been nine when the dark lord took control.  Now she was sixteen.  She had survived seven years living in hell.  How she did, she'll never know.  Why she tried she'll never know either.  So many times it would have been easier to just lie in the street and let death take her.  Her mother had been a fighter, Marianna herself had been a fighter for nine years, but now there was nothing left to fight for.  Happiness was nowhere, for no one.  The only thing that made life livable for Marianna in the past seven years was that she no longer felt alone.  Now all wizards and witches felt what she had felt her entire life.  Fear.  Fear for tomorrow.  Fear for today.  Fear in everything they do.  That had always been her life, and now she shared it with all other witches and wizards.            


End file.
